'LAST DAYS OF NIGHT' by Graham Moore. The author of "The Sherlockian" and Oscar-winning screenwriter for "The Imitation Game" has written an atmospheric new historical novel that takes place in gaslit 1880s New York, where George Westinghouse and Thomas A. Edison do legal battle over the right to bring electricity to the nation. Moore's protagonist _ a young man just out of Columbia law school _ finds himself at the center of the conflict. (Random House, $28)
'THE ART OF RIVALRY: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art' by Sebastian Smee. In this intriguing work of art history and psychology, The Boston Globe's art critic looks at the competitive friendships of Matisse and Picasso, Manet and Degas, Pollock and de Kooning, and Freud and Bacon. All four relationships illuminate the creative process _ both its imaginative breakthroughs and its frustrating blocks. (Random House, $28)
'THE GOLDEN AGE' by Joan London. An Australian novelist little known in this country, London sets her story at a children's polio hospital in Western Australia of the 1950s. There, Frank Gold _ a Holocaust survivor who emigrated with his parents _ falls in love with Elsa Briggs. We come to know these two young people, their families and the hospital staff in a heartfelt novel reminiscent of Colm Toibin's "Brooklyn." (Europa Editions, $17 paper)
